baandam (u/baandam) - Readit News

baandam commented on Why do new cars look like wet putty? blackbirdspyplane.com/p/w... · Posted by u/ramimac

dsfyu404ed · 3 years ago

>The Puritan and the modern intellect-centered (technical, ideological, on social media a lot...) type person have something in common

As someone who is more read I care to be about the culture of early new england I feel very comfortable (and by comfortable, I mean I hate it and I think that it is a terrible trend) saying that the current crop of people who fancy themselves intellectuals and historical puritans have approximately the same politics. They have some radically different beliefs about acceptable behavior but the overarching fundamentals about right vs wrong and community, family and self line up very well. This is not a compliment.

baandam · 3 years ago

The worst part to me is we are basically encoding puritanical values into the "soul" and bedrock foundations of AI for all future generations.

"Impure thoughts are a danger to democracy, access denied."

baandam commented on Why do new cars look like wet putty? blackbirdspyplane.com/p/w... · Posted by u/ramimac

swayvil · 3 years ago

The preference for drab colors need not be a choice made for austerity's sake.

It could be that after living in your head all day, bright colors are just unpleasant.

On a related note, I know 3 couples who party a lot. Large quantities of alchohol and cocaine.

All 3 redecorated their home in gray, black and chrome.

I think we're seeing a drug-induced change in how they appreciate colors.

baandam · 3 years ago

Gray and black walls though really make for a nice "frame" when you hang artwork.

I find the number of people with bare white walls far stranger.

baandam commented on Finding Language in the Brain thereader.mitpress.mit.ed... · Posted by u/never-the-bride

solarmist · 3 years ago

This is an extremely dismissive comment, plus you are way off basis that it is underdeveloped. It is just new/underdeveloped for OP.

Literal books have been written about this exact idea by Zellig Harris. The reason it is not more well known is that Chomsky (his student) became famous and reinterpreted a couple of his ideas (using mathematical logic for the basis of his work rather than Harris's set-theoretic base). But while Chomsky had to keep creating castles in the sky (including the idea of universal grammar/external metalanguage) to patch the holes in his theory Harris's theory needs none of that and is self-organizing and self-sufficient.

An alternate (and consistent with OPs idea) list of layers of processing a language.

1. Phonemic distinctions.

2. Words and morphemes, with their main meanings. (The word with its morphemes is an umbrella that also encompasses gesture, visual, and any other perceptual information related to the word. The words we use are not separate entities from our experiences. In the same way, mirror neurons aren't a thing. We mirror because we only have one set of machinery, and so to understand the other person is literally to hallucinate experiencing it to some degree.)

3. Word dependencies (the argument requirement of each word).

4. The selection of each word (the dependencies that have greater than average likelihood).

5. The canonical or preferred linearization (word order) and its alternatives.

6. The main reductions (variant shapes of words), their domain (a particular word or all words in a position) and the conditions for applying them.

Linearization is one of the last steps of producing a sentence. According to Operator grammar theory, most language complications come from the simplifications we produce as shortcuts (such as pronouns, contractions, conjunctions, etc).

So your first two questions are just the memory of the words/ideas/objects/etc combined with an operator and our perceptions in context do the choosing. Very much like an AST, but statistical (for word likeliness), as opposed to deterministic.

The most differences start to arise when we start the process of moving that sentence externally. We apply reductions and linearization which are language specific.

The intersection between HPCT (Hierarchical Perceptual Control Theory) and Operator Grammar explains the details pretty well. And Zellig Harris presents a complete analysis of English Grammar in "A Grammar of English on Mathematical Principles". It is a very different way of looking at language grammar, which makes much more sense to me biologically he spends significant time showing it can also reproduce traditional grammar. I.e. Traditional grammar could be viewed as a change of basis from Operator grammar.

Take a look at An embodied grammar of words[1] for an overview. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324362482_An_embodi...

baandam · 3 years ago

Great post. I am far too much of a linguistic neophyte to have any input but in trying to get a grasp on the field it does strike me that Chomsky will be a real time example of science advancing one funeral at a time.

I wouldn't be shocked if he becomes the archetype of this process for future generations. Hopefully we can find a word someday for this process of deification of an individual that holds back an entire field while the deity is alive.

baandam commented on I don’t want to be an internet person palladiummag.com/2022/11/... · Posted by u/chippy

amatecha · 3 years ago

It's up to the mods to decide whether they think it's acceptable content or not - flagging simply brings it to their attention. I don't think the HN audience needs to spend their time adding such a horribly-acting person to their consciousness. There could be any number of other, non-problematic "internet people" to focus on in an article, and I would welcome such an article being written and/or linked to in place of this one.

baandam · 3 years ago

I am glad you feel the need to think for me.

baandam commented on Nigeria bans ATM cash withdrawals over $225 a week to force use of CBDC cointelegraph.com/news/ni... · Posted by u/diazc

irjustin · 3 years ago

China was the leader in the push to pure cashless society. Cash still works, but only in small amounts.

Lots of HNews'ers claim cash is the only way to keep your freedoms, but that simply glosses over the fact that even if you have piles of cash under your bed, you can't do anything meaningful if the government decides to prevent/limit banks from accepting cash deposits - say in a 5 year timeframe.

After a while, businesses will simply stop accepting cash.

baandam · 3 years ago

I am pushing 50 and the idea of America becoming cashless in my lifetime is not going to happen.

There is no way our law makers are going to want to lose access to cash. No one wants to get a bribe or conduct a shady deal in a highly traceable digital currency in the US.

Not to mention, we can't even get rid of 100% utterly useless pennies. They are basically a form of government printed litter that I am not sure is even worth a homeless person's time to be bothered with.

baandam commented on Plaid Layoffs plaid.com/team-update/... · Posted by u/jbredeche

andersonmvd · 3 years ago

> Macroeconomic conditions have changed substantially this year. Despite being well-diversified across every category of financial services, we are seeing customers across the industry experiencing slower-than-expected growth.

sry for the stupid question, but does anyone have a good breakdown/video/article/explanation on the market change? I have some idea, but I'm not a pro.

baandam · 3 years ago

Zoom this chart in from about 2016 to now. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

The tide of capital is going way out after being at high tide for a very long time.

baandam commented on Plaid Layoffs plaid.com/team-update/... · Posted by u/jbredeche

lxe · 3 years ago

What delusional playbook does every tech leader get the idea to refer to their employees by cringey names like "Plaids" or "Metamates" in serious memos like this?

Imagine if your physician did this...

"Hey there KaiserPermanientoid! You have cancer!"

baandam · 3 years ago

Standard bubble nonsense. The kind of thing you will look back on 5 years from now and remember the good ol days and the absurdity of the bubble times.

We went way beyond the dot com bubble in all regards. The hangover of this much partying sucks.

baandam commented on The “Oscar movie” is dying worldofreel.com/blog/2022... · Posted by u/pmcpinto

mc32 · 3 years ago

I wouldn't overdramatize it. The movie business didn't start with Oscar awards and it does not need them to continue. The Oscars are essentially a self-congratulatory award which often were at odds with the public. The critics and audience don't always agree. And now with less capture by the studios and cinema resulting in people having more choices of what to watch, people are choosing the more basic and entertaining "plotlines" or rather, content.

The industry is changing, the audience probably didn't change too much, but the Oscars don't matter any more except to some (high profile) actors and some industry insiders and it looks like they are sad about it.

baandam · 3 years ago

I quite enjoy the type of movie they are referencing and have almost never watched a super hero movie but The Fabelmans looks like a total bore. That is even with wanting to see Julia Butters acting evolve.

We will see with Nolan's Oppenheimer next year.

This is all over dramatized. Butters will probably be the biggest actor in the world in 10 years making "serious" dramas.

Tarantino has even talked about how this goes in cycles and we have been going through a boring time like in the late 50s.

baandam commented on I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math nautil.us/how-i-rewired-m... · Posted by u/paulpauper

sph · 3 years ago

"I rewired my brain to do <thing>" — back in my day we used to call that learning, especially after we found out that your neural pathways change constantly, strengthening and pruning inefficiencies, when learning and repeating any kind of behaviour, be it practicing a language or becoming addicted to a drug.

I guess "I finally learned and understood maths" is not as engaging a title.

baandam · 3 years ago

"I rewired my brain to become fluent in math with the help of an AI"

translation:

"I found a math textbook from a google search"

baandam commented on It’s not Tourette’s but a new type of mass sociogenic illness academic.oup.com/brain/ar... · Posted by u/mpweiher

reilly3000 · 3 years ago

This is alarmist BS. Facebook group fodder. “Humans have working mirror neurons” could have been the headline.

All of you futurists who have slipped down the slope are worried about media spreading “sociogenic illness”. Of course media is powerful. It always has been. There has been about 75 years of fears and schemes about using TV to mass hypnotize its watchers. The same with radio before it.

What is happening is mass unstructured clustering by social algos, specifically TikTok. Historically content and ad algorithms have focused on contextual relevance with structured categories. Graphs have extended that to included social context. TikTok has novel input parameters about user behavior. There have been many reports that this unstructured clustering is surfacing niche medical diagnoses regularly.

A lot of neurodivergent traits have historically been under diagnosed for the same goddamn ignorance as OP’s piece: “it’s just attention seeking”. This type of dismissal by parents, teachers, and doctors alike have lead to millions of people leading shorter, harder lives. ADHD, Autism, Tourette’s, Bipolar, schizophrenia, etc are present in larger numbers than are diagnosed. Often time these lifelong genetic differences lead to 10x+ higher suicide rates, inability to sustain work, and myriad health issues. It’s really common that mental health issues that don’t result in property damage just get ignored, downplayed, or under treated even if acknowledged.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 29. Having that information combined with medication, therapy, and exercise has changed my life for the better dramatically. If TikTok was the surface where I discovered that, I would have likely been dismissed or even openly mocked by my doctors, and continued with a life of suffering or worse.

By the way, it seems people cited in the article are experiencing a form of Tourette’s syndrome that is a typical neurological trait associated with other pathology. Echolalia has far less cultural awareness, but accurate describes the behavior: “Echolalia is not only associated with Autism, but also with several other conditions, including congenital blindness, intellectual disability, developmental delay, language delay, Tourette's syndrome, schizophrenia and others.” it’s not just swear words like on TV. My child does this. What happened to start as a YouTube ad for “Raid Shadow Legends” turned into a joke punchline, turned into a phrase that they cannot stop themselves from saying compulsively at odd times, after multiple years. It’s sub-clinical by itself, but is consistent with the diagnosis they do have.

This article is red meat, BS fear bait at best, dangerous at worst. To the extent content like this actually promotes diagnosis denial, it’s complicit in very literal harm of patients and those around them.

baandam · 3 years ago

Exactly. The car is just a better version of the horse and buggy. There are no massive sociological changes that came from the invention of the automobile.

Human social behavior is completely scale invariant.

Society is just the relationship I have with my brother, replicated millions of times with no higher order effects, weird feedback loops, weird non-linear effects.

I am not buying that alarmist nonsense either.